Hosting A Giveaway – Here Are Some No-No’s In Social Media Entries

I’m a fairly new blogger and I’ll be the first to admit I still have a lot to learn – I seem to learn something new everyday. With social media platforms changing rules on a seemingly constant basis, we have to stay current on these changes or risk being penalized, even to the point of having a page shut down, which could be detrimental to our blog.

I just want to outline a few tips from some common mistakes I see on other giveaways that I’ve learned are big no-no’s.

You can’t have a like page, as they consider it a farm page. However, you can have the link on a Rafflecopter widget or Giveaway Tool (whatever app you use for your giveaways). So, many bloggers are now creating unique Rafflecopters to list those facebook page entries. This is an important tool, as it is one of the things that really helps to grow our audience and helps our numbers.

You can make an optional entry for someone to like a page on Facebook on the giveaway widget, but IT CANNOT BE A MANDATORY ENTRY.

You can’t make an entry requesting you to share a link on Facebook.

You can’t make an entry requesting you to like or comment on a Facebook post/status.

You cannot notify the winner by Facebook in any way either through messaging or posting to their wall or announcing it on your page.

I’m sure there are more, but that is all I can think of off the top of my head.

For more clarification, read the link above.

Google Plus

PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING GOOGLE PLUS RELATED IS A HUGE NO-NO ON GIVEAWAYS! JUST DON’T DO IT!

Pinterest

You can’t make an entry requesting you to pin something from a certain post. (http://business.pinterest.com/logos-and-marketing-guidelines/#ads)

I haven’t really run into anything with Twitter. Almost anything you can do on a giveaway for Twitter is an option on most giveaway widgets anyways and that streamlines things and makes it a lot easier.

If anyone knows of anything else, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to this post.

What Others Have Said:

I have a problem with Twitter – because I do not have a blog or a bunch of people liking me, I hit the 2000 people than have to delete some so I can still join blogs or enter contests. Any suggestions.

Susan the only way I know of to get around it is to get more followers. Twitter is looking at your followers/following ratio and if it’s way off/high on the end of who you are following they will limit you until you get more followers to even it up. They don’t want ppl just using the acct for one-sided things {like entering giveaways} but they have been nice enough in their TOS to not prohibit things that other social media has. Try to get more ppl to follow you and you will be released. That’s the way I understand it anyway.robin phillips-knotts recently posted..{Giveaway} #NewFluff New Baby New Fluff Hop

Thanks for putting all this in one place – as a newer blogger, I find things everyday that I should or shouldn’t be doing – so it’s always nice to hear from the voice of experience!Krista recently posted..The Seaweed Bath Co Shampoo and Body Butter Review

I have been told this by countless SEO experts and a speaker who specializes in social media law. It is in their terms of service evidently and has to do with either their penguin or panda algorithm. I don’t really understand how it all works, just know I’ve run into this countless times.

Oh, that is new info for me. I don’t host giveaways but I do join some and I’ve come across several asking to like their Google+ pages or to share their links in there. I guess a lot of people are in the dark about Google+ terms of service, that includes me.

This is really good to know! I’ve been entering these for almost 6 months, but I still run into issues sometimes with Twitter or Pinterest telling me I’m posting too much. I think a lot of companies figure it’s a good idea to do a giveaway but it doesn’t even occur to them that there are rules about this.

Wow, I have entered a number of giveaways just today that seem to be in violation of some of these rules. I really don’t see the big deal if people ask for a share or a pin. I think these rules are ridiculous.Trish F recently posted..UGG Boots Giveaway! Just in time for the Holidays!

I have been suspended from twitter for the third time in a month and will post the reasons on here later with twitters reason so maybe I can get help with them and others can keep from getting suspended.

I reached that magic 2000 number on twitter last month and could not follow any more so on several drawings I just had to skip those entries.. I helped promote a few using my twitter as my free link and after more people followed me, I began to be able to follow more… I do know that it does not seem to be a 1:1 ratio because when I attempted to delete a few older ones in order to follow new ones, I had to delete a few before it would allow me to follow just one. I can’t stand what FB is doing.. I feel like they should allow us to be free to like pages if we want to . Let us make our own decisions… I can understand the rule of the like not being mandatory, but beyond that, they should leave us alone. And especially not unlike pages behind our backs! If anyone complains I think FB’s official response should be that you’re free to enter the giveaway or not, your free to like a page or not. Period.Lisa Williams recently posted..No Joke – Win Big April Fool’s Giveaway

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